This week there’s a major anniversary in Indigenous history that not enough Australians know about. The Museum of Australian Democracy is recognising this anniversary in a new exhibition – Yes: the ongoing story of the 1967 Referendum – and asks prominent Australians how they feel about the referendum today.
Horses were a vital part of the Parliament House opening ceremonies. What did they make of all the fuss? Three photographs of Bill, the horse ridden in Canberra by the Duke of York, provide a fresh insight into the day’s events.
Hilda Abbott was a distinguished guest whose recollections reveal that behind the public performance, VIPs are only people after all.
It took determination, ingenuity and a small piece of string to get Parliament House finished in time for its grand opening in 1927.
An object now in display in our Designing Democracy gallery documents one man’s life-or-death decision on Australia’s pastoral frontier.
In 1965 Queen Elizabeth gave Sir Robert Menzies a gift so special that he had to contemplate burying it on a beach. What was it?
The Rev. Dorothy McRae-McMahon looks back at her involvement in the Ecumenical Movement and anti-Apartheid in Sydney during the 1980s and 1990s.
Jane Harris tells the story of her involvement in the anti-apartheid movement and her late brother John, a member of the African Resistance Movement (ARM) during the 1960s.
The museum’s latest exhibition, Memories of the Struggle: Australians against Apartheid, opens to the public next Wednesday 27 April when it is launched by former prime minister, Bob Hawke.
As the curtain-raiser to the 2015 Behind the Lines exhibition at the Museum of Australian Democracy, Old Parliament House, three accomplished political cartooning practitioners explained how they decide who and what to draw, and what to avoid.
In 1952, the Australian Government made a great addition to the nation’s library collection when it acquired an issue of Magna Carta that dated back to 1297.
Henry Parkes is known as Australia’s ‘Father of Federation’ as one of the leading figures in our progress to nationhood that was achieved in 1901.
With the fabrication finalised, and all the objects chosen and ready to go, it was time for the last task: installation.
In the second of a series of ‘behind the scenes’ blog posts, Campbell Rhodes shares some of the experiences and challenges of putting this exhibition together.
In the first of a series of behind the scenes blog posts, Curatorial officer Campbell Rhodes shares some of the experiences and challenges of putting this exhibition together.
You can tell a lot about someone from what they buy. Our Prime Ministers of Australia gallery now has on display a selection of Harold Holt’s bank records, kindly lent to us by the National Archives of Australia.
On 28 June 1914, the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was shot and killed by a Serbian radical in Sarajevo, setting off a chain of events that plunged the world into what was the bloodiest war in recorded history.
Be Prepared. That was probably the motto of the entire population of provisional Parliament House during the countdown to the Queen’s arrival on 15 February 1954.
There are some events that are imprinted indelibly in our minds. For me, the first visit of Queen Elizabeth II to Australia 60 years ago still conjures up vivid memories—I saw her not once, but three times!
What do a former policeman, a governor of Bombay, a veteran of the Boer War, a decorated Vietnam veteran, and a Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner all have in common?
